The disclosure relates generally to the field of motion tracking, and more specifically to systems, devices, and methods for detecting false movements for motion correction during a medical imaging scan.
There are various modalities for performing medical imaging of patients. For example, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a medical imaging technique used in radiology to visualize internal structures of the body in detail. An MRI scanner is a device in which the patient or a portion of the patient's body is positioned within a powerful magnet where a magnetic field is used to align the magnetization of some atomic nuclei (usually hydrogen nuclei—protons) and radio frequency magnetic fields are applied to systematically alter the alignment of this magnetization. This causes the nuclei to produce a rotating magnetic field detectable by the scanner and this information is recorded to construct an image of the scanned region of the body. These scans typically take several minutes (up to about one hour in some instances), and in prior art devices any movement can degrade or ruin the images and require the scan to be repeated. For example, a scanner can be any medical or biomedical imaging system, such as MRI, CAT, PET, SPECT, nuclear medicine or the like.
Additionally, there are various radiation therapies, proton therapies, and other therapies that can be applied to patients. For example, radiation therapy can be applied to a targeted tissue region. In some systems, radiation therapy can be dynamically applied in response to patient movements. However, in many such systems, the tracking of patient movements does not have a high degree of accuracy. Accordingly, the use of such systems can result in the application of radiation therapy to non-targeted tissue regions, thereby unintentionally harming healthy tissue while intentionally affecting diseased tissue. The foregoing is also true for proton therapies and other therapies.
In order to track motion of patient movements during a medical imaging and/or therapeutic procedure, some modalities utilize one or more markers. For example, in some motion tracking technologies related to medical imaging, one or more markers can be placed on one or more portions of a patient's body, which are then tracked by one or more detectors. However, not all movement of such markers truly reflects motion of the patient, or the organ or organs of interest. For example, a marker may slip on the skin, or skin may slip relative to the organ(s) of interest, resulting in unwanted motion signals, which can be referred to herein as “false movement” or “false motion,” and incorrect motion correction.